New Horizon Initiative (2022)

Together with visual artist Gus Drake The “New Horizon Initiative” analyzes and visualizes the different interests of non-human life in a landscape to advocate for inclusive decision-making.

Inspired by the Rights of the Nature movement, our ‘New Horizon Initiative’ is intended to empower non-human life and give them a voice in the formulation of political and governmental participation and thus contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals.

What would a landscape look like if non-human life such as plants, animals, insects were in charge? How does a bee see the landscape? What is the perspective of a tree? How does a snake see the world? How can these perspectives, the interests of non-human life, help to make executives aware that they are responsible for all life forms in their organizational decision-making? Decision-making in which the interests of non-human life should have the same value as the interests of humans.

We presented our first visual stakeholder analysis at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm-El-Sheikh. We showed what this tourist resort would have looked like if human design included the interests of insects, reptiles, mammals and birds? By showing how non-human entities perceive their environment, the “New Horizon Initiative” provides an AI rendered visual stakeholder analysis to “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss” (SDG 15). Our thinking towards non-human life needs an urgent paradigmatic shift to “combat climate change and its impact” (SDG 13).

We position ‘New Horizon Initiative’ at the intersection of science, technology and art, to inspire new ways of engaging in dialogue on climate change. We use scientific data that we visualize and use Artificial Intelligence to create an ideal landscape image. Through the lens of “machine vision,” the viewer is presented with a series of idealized landscapes.

In order to promote inclusive decision making around ‘the rights of nature’ and influence organizational and political decision making, we see two platforms within this project to be active, namely; literally in the boardroom through presentations of the ‘New Horizon Initiative’ method and within the artistic domain; galleries, fine arts museums and festivals to exhibit the created images.

See also our project page: www.newhorizoninitiative.com

UN Climate Change Summit (COP27) - Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt

Noorderlicht Festival (2023) - Museum Belvédère – Heerenveen, The Netherlands

Dutch Design Week 2023 – Eindhoven, The Netherlands

New Horizon Initiative "Elysium Desert" was on display at Museum Belvédère in Heerenveen, as part of the "Regenerate" International Photo Festival hosted by the Noorderlicht.

At the Dutch design Week, as part of Next Nature's Space Farming exhibition, we mapped out for the Embassy of Food how Dutch agriculture would look through the eyes of different plants and animals, such as the Montagu's harrier, a protected species with a special connection to Dutch fields. The landscape of the Netherlands is, in fact, man-made. But for whom?

As part of the Creative Climate Coalition we presented our prototype of the New Horizon method at the UN Climate Change Summit (COP27) in Sharm-El-Sheikh in November 2022. At the COP, we showed to politicians and policy makers what Sharm El Sheikh would have looked like if the interests of insects, reptiles, mammals and birds had been included in the design of this tourist resort.